Doppelganger
by AbyssalCaesar
Summary: Advance Wars Dark Conflict/Days of Ruin. Inspired by the conversation between Ed/Will and Stolos/Caulder in the final chapter all about Stolos' origins and true nature. SPOILERS FOR ANYONE WHO HAS NOT FINISHED THE GAME!


**Fanfic the 2nd, yet again based on Advance Wars Dark Conflict/Days of Ruin. This time with everyones favourite evil scientist Dr Stolos (Dr Caulder if you are American) as the main focus so let us take a trip down memory lane and look at this phycopaths origins.**

**Translator**

**Stolos=Caulder**

**Lili=Penny**

**Larissa=Tabitha**

**Lutia (Catleia) = Lutaria (Isabelle)**

**Laurentia=Rubinelle**

**Zephyrus=Lazuria**

**Doppelganger**

Test Subject 3341. That was how he had been referred to: in the lab, in the arena, in the holding cell. Test Subject 3341. That was all that had distinguished him from his brothers; the only thing that was his to call his own was the number. Now he had so much more. He had the stolen life of his creator to call his own. The name he now went by was Dr Stolos.

He had been "born" in a tank alongside his brothers at the same time and each of his siblings was genetically identical to him in every way. Their father and creator Dr Stolos was the head of a scientific facility and had created them from his own DNA to satisfy his own curiosity and, to feed his insatiable hunger for knowledge.

They had been born as infants but their growth process had been vastly accelerated and they reached adulthood in 10 years. A number of them were removed at various stages of growth to participate in a variety of unethical experiments that often they did not return from. He was lucky. He had been selected and as a young child had been taken to an operating table and strapped to it. He hadn't struggled or fought back of course. He knew nothing of free will and had no understanding of what they were going to do to him.

His father had paced round the table with a syringe in hand and had spoken excitedly to himself. He could still remember the words he uttered although they had meant nothing to him at the time. "This syringe contains an elixir I call the Athena Gene. Through repeated dissections of test subjects and close analysis of brain hormones I have managed to isolate the gene that appears to directly determine intelligence. With this you should gain mental capacity far beyond your brothers and your mind will be open to new ideas. Think about it, with a mind like yours you will be able to revolutionise science, philosophy, the arts, they was we see the universe. The secrets of creation and knowledge will in time unfold themselves out to you and you shall embrace them! Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, it is a fitting title for my finest clone." Immediately afterwards he felt a prick in his neck and then he fell into a deep sleep while the gene did its work. Little did Dr Stolos know that he had just sown the seeds of his own demise.

After that day his life seemed somehow different; less simple and infinitely clearer. He knew what he was and the circumstances behind his creation. More than that he had developed a sense of free will and was able to critically analyse the world around him. He could learn facts and recall them like most clones but, more than that he could interpret them and evaluate their significance and potential. This intelligence blossomed and when he had reached maturity a test revealed he had an IQ of approximately 250; his father a mere 180 in comparison.

For all the gifts the Athena Gene had bestowed upon him, there was one thing it could never give him that all humans should have, a conscious. He remained devoid of a moral compass and as he grew up he began to see the stupidity and absurdity of people who seemed to attach arbitary moral values to actions and deeds. What made life so special? Nothing it was simply a protein-based energy conservation mechanism. What was good and evil? Such values were only the by-product of a society that thrived on backward thinking and the need to control its populace. What made a person unique? Nothing; a clone could be created in less than an hour. These questions and answers he ran over in his head moved Test Subject 3341 ever closer to a concept he viewed as utterly meaningless; evil.

Like most clones, his reflexes and tactical awareness were superb and he made short work of all his combatants in the Testing Arena that Stolos used to conduct battles and military tests. He would sometimes even face one of his brother's and kill them without hesitation or thought. He could remember looking down at a clone bleeding to death on the shining, white, tiled floor now spattered with blood from the spear that had pierced his throat. Watching as the clone made pathetic attempts to grasp the shaft and pull it out 3341 had one thought, "watching himself die was fascinating!"

One day, something changed in Dr Stolos' attitude towards 3341. Before he had nurtured the gene and revelled in the affects it was having on his "son" but, as he began to come to the realization 3341 was superior in every single way, he grew paranoid and began to fear his creation. With this in mind he ordered his men to prepare 3341 for immediate dissection. Perhaps he could still prove useful and Dr Stolos could have the Athena enhanced organs implanted into him.

Little did he know that his test subject was well prepared for this eventuality having long ago come to the conclusion that there was no reason why he should allow himself to be used in such ghastly experiments and that Dr Stolos was wasting his facilities vast amount of technology and power by not sharing it with lesser people outside of the labs. The wonders that could be recorded if such technology were to be used by warring armies and the science within the lab unleashed on the world.

When the two guards arrived to collect him they entered his cell where he spent most of his time between experiments. 3341 saw immediately they were armed with Tasers and as a last resort pistols. "Dr Stolos requests you come with us for more experiments" The first guard said, his eyes obscured behind his helmet's visor. "It's about checking the progress of the Athena Gene."

3341 rose from his bed where he had been sitting a deranged smile on his gaunt, pale face and his long white hair flowing around him. "Very well," he spoke almost cheerily "I'll show you its progress for yourselves." The guards glanced at each other and went to un-holster their Tasers.

He darted forward with reflexes no other human could match and got the first guard's head in a choke and before the poor man could even struggle he snapped his neck with clinical precision. Before the body had even slumped to the floor he had sprinted at the second guard who fired his Taser into his chest. The current ran through his body and temporarily stunned him as the electricity crackled through his nervous system. He was not incapacitated for long however, and reaching up grabbed hold of the end of the Taser and yanked it clean out of the guard's hands. The guard stared in disbelief and horror and ran for the door to the cell. 3341 caught up with him quickly, grabbed him by the neck and hurled him against the cell wall with such force he was knocked unconscious. Taking the guard's pistol from him 3341 made no hesitation in putting a bullet through the comatose man's head.

Leaving the cell, another guard confronted him having heard the commotion and fired several shots from his pistol at him. Thankfully for 3341, he was wearing his tight fitting, flexible, black body armour that he, his brothers and his father wore and the shots did not penetrate far. 3341 leapt forward, grabbed the man by the head and slammed his skull backwards into the ground shattering it and causing immediate fatal brain damage. An unarmed scientist came upon him and screaming fled to try and get help. 3341 pounced and grabbing her by the neck choked the life out of her as she desperately tried in vain to get air into her lungs and pathetically clawed at his face.

3341 moved quickly throughout the facility, killing and evading personnel and he succeeded in releasing all the other clones and inspired them to fight back. Having armed themselves the clones ran rampant through the facility and caused much destruction. 3341 had given explicit orders that no research was to be damaged but his orders had had a limited affect. In addition the security personnel were still better armed and organised, he realised they would not win in an outright conflict. Instead he decided on a new objective.

Dr Stolos turned around and looked into his own eyes. "I see Athena has performed beyond expectations." He remarked as his perfect creation advanced on him. "Kill me if you have to I can see my destiny is now yours for the taking. Promise me one thing though," 3341 stopped. "Carry on my research. Do whatever it takes to satisfy your curiosity, no matter the cost just as I have done." 3341 nodded assent before he took a large spear that he frequently had used in the training arena and lunged, ramming it clean through Stolos' body armour in a spray of blood. Dr Stolos made a gurgling sound that may have been pain or laughter, fell backwards and died.

3341 bent down and removed Stolos' lab jacket from the body and put it on. Inside its pockets he found all the various credentials of the man he had just killed and when he saw his reflection in a computer monitor he saw his father, Dr Stolos, gazing back at him. Turning around and looking at the dead man on the floor all he saw was the gifted but expendable Test Subject 3341.

It was not long after that the security men had stopped the insurrection and taken the surviving clones back to their cells. A guard came running into the control room and stopped at the sight of the bloody corpse on the ground. Dr Stolos turned round to face him. "Ah yes don't mind him, that would be our good friend 3341, the leader of this uprising. Go on remove the body and cremate it with the others..." The man began dragging the body away, Stolos turned and spoke again. "Oh and execute every last clone that still lives. Dissect them and store the organs in cold stasis, they may yet prove useful." The guard nodded an affirmation before removing the body.

Stolos went to watch the executions; just to be sure everything was done properly. A single bullet to the head was deemed the most efficient way of preserving all organs minus the brain that Stolos was not particularly interested in. It was his brain that was important not these abject failures' inferior minds. The corpses were stripped of organs and the bloody husks were taken away to an incinerator.

That night when all the personnel, with no clones to guard or study, had retired and gone to bed, Dr Stolos went into a lab with a syringe filled with his own blood. A question had been plaguing him all day. How long was he going to live? Telomeres, the genetic determiner of an organism's lifespan, were frequently shorter in cloned animals and there was no reason why he might not be nearing the end of his life. He inserted the syringe into a machine which proceeded to analyse his telomere length and after 5 minutes informed him of the results. Stolos looked at his results and let out a howling cackle, the Athena Gene had truly blessed him.

Over the next few months Dr Stolos formed the private military contractor IDS and began selling the weapons of war he had created to the warring nations of Zephyrus and Laurentia. It was he who placed the Nemesis Missiles in both countries to act as deterrents. His work grew ever more unethical in the scientific community and it was not long before his more humane rivals attempted to dispose of him in a plane crash but he survived and continued his research with renewed vigour. Dr Stolos spent the money given to him by Zephyrus and Laurentia to build a state of the art lab and fortress, the Owl Nest, calculated strong enough to withstand even a direct nuclear strike. It was in this playground that he fathered his four children Cyrus, Larissa, Lutia and Lili all carbon copies of him on a genetic level if not in appearance and personality. To be safe he then cloned them a further number of times so that if one should die or have to be used in an experiment he would have plenty more identical lab rats. Like any good father he doted on them; giving them toys and inventing creative, albeit destructive, games for them to play. Despite this outward affection he never forgot they were still nothing more than expendable.

He on the other hand, was so much more. He was unique, a survivor, the most intelligent of all beings. His rule would be never ending for there would never be an end to science's twisted potential or his curiosity to witness it. He was more than a number and so much more than just an ordinary human being.


End file.
